And it's just RMB 17! The quality is excellent, way better than the ebay autostar serial cable I got a few years back, and it's much cheaper as well. I got it on the following day and it is from Shanghai to Hong Kong!

And then you will need a serial port, i.e. RS-232, but then it's really hard. I searched through all the PC that I could access but none of them got a serial port. So, I took the plunge to buy a USB serial adapter. I have experience on that with my Autostar before, so I got this one:

And it comes with a long USB cable too! This cable will work with my Lumenera 075M, too.

From that taobao site, I realized that Chinese firmware is available, so why not?

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Last night, we went out for watching the moon and playing. I only brought my Ukulele without a telescope since the weather was no good actually. But to our surprise, the moon came out from behind the cloud.

Anyway, I still got my mobile phone.

Arriving home, the moon was about in the right place from imaging, I pulled out my Nexstar SE mount in the hope to use it with my C5 plus my DSLR to shoot a big moon. But then the Nexstar Plus hand controller refused to boot up with the following error message:

“Bootloader invalid package 0002
”

Apparently, the firmware was corrupted and a quick google exercise confirmed that. Ordering a cable from US results in a heavy shipping charge and long shipping time. Checking from Chinese site taobao gives a cheaper and faster option. Finally, I managed to find a OEM or better say DIY cable at very low cost! I expect to have it on hand on Thursday. So, I can still use the mount on the planned local trip on Saturday.

--

We have plenty of sunshine today, but my Mark-X does not allow me to point at the sun due to its position from inside my playing room. Got to wait until the Nexstar SE is fixed soon hopefully.